Sonic Mania (Switch, PS4, Xbox One, PC...Netflix?)

I completely forgot about those WW things, mainly because...why the heck does it have freezing things in an otherwise industrial level?

Speaking of that zone, as a guy who always thought the bouncy floor gimmick was a good idea that was just implemented horribly, I am so, so glad that Chemical Plant 2 in this game proved me right after all these years.

 

Lava Reef

Is from

Sonic & Knuckles

 

Stay on the ground

 

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGK2P1cOJJc[/youtube]

This was hard to watch at times, but really fascinating all the same to see people who aren't necessarily Sonic fans or even gamers would approach something like this. They were WAY more excited about Star Posts (or "checkpoints") than I've ever been, and way more terrified of the drowning music. It was also really fun to see them get hyped up when cool, speedy things happened, since I kinda just take that for granted. I was weirded out by how many of them used the analog stick. Also, any puzzle game with a well is apparently Tetris.

 

fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck. How did I forget, I just screwed my chance of becoming a full member with that :v:

TO BE FAIR most of the time S3 and S&K are effectively treated as one game anyway, since they are.

 

I honestly feel like this is how most people I know approach Sonic. Even gamers, they just complicate themselves more than they should.

 

I died countless times in this boss until I realised that you could stand in the ground and walk around as normal, at which point it becomes very easy. Just do that, and don't before your air dash thing because it consumes extra rings and gets you nowhere.

 

I spent a good while trying to actually use the air dash in a practical manner. I'm really struggling to understand how it's meant to be used. As an escape mechanic? I've yet to use it offensively and it's only other use seems to have a bit of a joyride around the empty space. Not using it at all seems to be the winning strategy.

 

You can obtain it in 2-player Mean Bean mode, once you unlock that.


Also, regarding "it was heavily implied that Sonic and co. were the only inhabitants of these worlds", I think the little animal buddies (Flicky, Kecky, etc.) might not be as anthropomorphic as Sonic and the others, but are at least sentient enough to do stuff like watch TV and other such things. Considering how many of them are supposed to be trapped in badniks and capsules and such, it's not unthinkable that these creatures are the "main" inhabitants of these worlds, and even have cities for themselves, but generally stay "out of the way" for Sonic's adventures until freed from their metal prisons.

 

I think it depends on how much we're taking Sonic Team's interpretation of them in Sonic Runners into account, where they are literally as woodland-like as any real life creature, aside from making squeaks and noises that others have to translate for the main characters.
Then again, Sonic Runners doesn't exist any more so I guess that's a self solving problem :v:

 

Yeah, but humans are pretty well established in the Classic series. Sonic 1 has Eggman for starters, though I know many don't actually think of him as human... Sonic CD had an angel statue. Sonic 3&K had the arrow shooting faces in Marble Garden Zone, depictions of humans in Hieroglyphs in Sandopolis and the Golem is humanoid...

It's more of a jump to assume that the little woodland friends in Badniks are the citybuilders than to go by the evidence of humanity these things present.

 

I always do wonder how much of this "Humans don't exist in Classic Sonic" thinking is a carry over from the Western marketing, with Fleetway, Archie, 'Mobius' and the like hammering into our heads at an early age that Sonic's world was full of exclusively animals? People always tend to associate humans with Modern sonic due to their in-game appearance in SA1, but was that ever an issue with the classic Japanese fans (I mean, all six of them that actually cared at the time)?, Earth was established as the planet, and of course Madonna was set to be a Sonic 1 character from the start (not that anyone knew that at the time but still..). Combined with the Sonic Screensaver images of plenty of human interaction, I feel like someone who would be exposed to Sonic now without all the past supplement western media may see Humans as less of a 'Modern Sonic ruined this concept' and more just a 'Hardware finally caught up to have real cities and NPCs' situation' which is what I assume it is.

This is all just me have a ponder though, so I may be completely off the mark.

 

Even the Christmas episode of AoStH had humans in it, plus that little cartoon on Sonic Jam.

 

I wonder when someone will mod the Classic Sonic Statue in the Collector's Edition to be an actual working Genesis? The case seems big enough to shove the guts of a real Genesis into it! A raspberry pi could also probably fit in there too...

 

It's almost a 1:1 replica of a real MegaDrive - I compared them. The question is... why would you want to?

 

In terms of things that don't really matter but are nice to think about, I've been thinking of how the new zones (Studiopolis, Press Garden, Mirage Saloon, and Titanic Monarch) fit along with the other zones. Why did Sonic visit them in particular, pretty much, alongside the others. Well, TMZ is just the typical "Eggman base final stage" zone so there's that.

At first I took the position that the first three were zones that Sonic and Tails had run through before, the original Genesis trilogy just "glossed over" them and we're seeing them for the first time. Unfortunately this doesn't work too well because S3&K's level transitions make it very clear that Sonic and Tail go directly from each stage to other, with no room to say "well, they went to some other zones inbetween the ones you actually play". You could say that Mirage Saloon was a Sonic 2 zone in-between Mystic Cave and Oil Ocean, which is honestly is true that it's basically Dust Hill. Huh, no wonder it appears before Oil Ocean in this game :v:/>

Actually this game's plot is...weird. It's not made very clear if Sonic and Tails are time-traveling (they have to for Stardust Speedway to make sense, but then you wonder why the heck they time travel to the Past that one time but nowhere else) or not.

 

I saw one on eBay that had been modified with a Raspberry Pi, yeah.

 

The new zones are new places Sonic hasn't been before. He just happens to travel through them this time.

As for Stardust Speedway, the time on the Little Planet is constantly in flux right? Wasn't that the reason they gave for being able to travel back/forwards in time in CD?

 

I find it odd that the Mania Blue Spheres have next to no variation. Sometimes there are more or fewer to collect, but the patterns are practically identical every time.

 

So this has been bothering me for a few days. In the Special Stage theme Dimension Heist, I swear there's two Puyo Puyo tracks subtley referenced, one from Puyo 1 (Mean Bean Machine) and the other from Puyo 2.

Normally I'd shrug this off - like "Yeah, some soungs sound alike, so what?", but for one Mania tune to sound like two seperate Puyo songs? And with Mean Bean in Mania as well? IT GOT MY SCRAP BRAIN TICKING.

I've tried my best to mash the tunes up but it's only rough, so if anything discredits this it'll be my shitty Adobe Audition skills.

(For the second comparison, ignore the Genesis version of the Puyo 2 track and compare the Fever version which plays after, which does match the tone of Dimension Heist a lot better.)

Anyway, now you can all point and laugh as I run away with my tinfoil hat. :v: